Understanding why people born blind never develop schizophrenia could transform how we think about and treat one of medicine’s most baffling conditions.
If you know you’re alone at home and then hear voices, that might be one way. There are ways to distinguish the presence of people beyond sight.
Blindness is much more than total blindness, which only describes a minority of blind people. There are different definitions, but the World Health Organization puts the definition as less than 3/60 or a visual field of less than 10 degrees in the better-seeing eye. That basically means that if you need to be more than 20 times closer to an object to be able to see the same level of detail, or you have almost no peripheral vision, you qualify.
Schizophrenia produces many symptoms other than hallucinations and causes profound cognitive and social dysfunction. Poverty of thought, delusions, and disordered thinking and speech among others. There would be signs others could see.
Maybe the blind schizophrenics just don’t ever know.
If they are hearing hallucinations, how would they know they aren’t real? It’s not like they can see that there’s nobody saying these things.
If you know you’re alone at home and then hear voices, that might be one way. There are ways to distinguish the presence of people beyond sight.
Blindness is much more than total blindness, which only describes a minority of blind people. There are different definitions, but the World Health Organization puts the definition as less than 3/60 or a visual field of less than 10 degrees in the better-seeing eye. That basically means that if you need to be more than 20 times closer to an object to be able to see the same level of detail, or you have almost no peripheral vision, you qualify.
Schizophrenia produces many symptoms other than hallucinations and causes profound cognitive and social dysfunction. Poverty of thought, delusions, and disordered thinking and speech among others. There would be signs others could see.
dude they’re blind, not stupid.
Well, asking someone else who is around would be a good way, for one thing.
How often do you check with others to confirm that something you just experienced was real?
“Do you hear that or is it just my tinnitus?” is a fairly common question in my household.
The sighted schizophrenics don’t know their hallucinations aren’t real. It’s always an external diagnosis.
Not for everyone, I know my hallucinations aren’t real, and sought out help myself.